Arnhem Land to benefit from new allied health centre

Sarah Fincham-Thomson’s story of working in a remote area
couldn’t be more different to the usual media reports of hardship
or despair. Born and raised in Arnhem Land, she decided to return
from Queensland five years ago after speaking to the owner of the
local medical centre, who described the huge impact an absence of
physiotherapy services was having on the community.

‘They were having to fly people to Darwin and interstate on the
Patient Assisted Travel Scheme. People were just unable to
rehabilitate in Gove,’ Sarah recalls.

That was enough to motivate her to come back and invest in her
community, which she describes as more than ‘just another really
rich mining town’, a perception that had developed over many years
of Rio Tinto aluminium production. Upon returning, she opened
a practice servicing private clients and negotiated with the Gove
District Hospital to provide inpatient services as a private contractor.
The lack of any physiotherapy service at the hospital over a period
of years meant long-term rehabilitation was almost non-existent.

‘People came in sick and left a little bit better, but they came back
sick again, because they weren’t sent away with a therapy plan or
any sort of management in terms of rehabilitation,’ Sarah says.
An appreciative community embraced the new physiotherapy
practice, Arnhem Physiotherapy Services, and Sarah saw rapid
growth of her business.

‘Now it’s been a matter of listening to that same story: we don’t
have a speech therapist, we don’t have a podiatrist, we haven’t had
a psychologist.’

Closure of the Rio Tinto refinery in 2014 halved the town’s
population almost overnight; however, Sarah has seen the
transformation as an opportunity.

Later this year, she’ll be opening the Arnhem Allied Health Centre,
a multidisciplinary practice with eight fully serviced rooms.
Administration and marketing will be provided to all practitioners.

With the usual risks of opening a business amplified in a remote
location, Sarah is trying to build the confidence of healthcare
practitioners so they’ll invest in the community and improve the
health of its residents, many of whom suffer from diabetes, heart
disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

While this will go a long way to improving service gaps, Sarah
remains ambivalent about the future of allied healthcare for this
pocket of the Northern Territory.

‘I believe the problem is allocation of funding. We certainly don’t
have any lack of doctors, but part of the problem is a lack of
advocacy for allied health services in Arnhem Land.’

However, she’s hopeful that the NDIS, rolling out in the area in
January 2017, has the potential to place private services like hers
within reach of significant numbers of the population.